Many former hackers have been hired by the government with TS clearances and it's ridiculous to compare teenage hacker groups to violent street gangs. I told an agency of previous hacking stuff and they were more concerned with me admitting to cheating on a math test at college lol.
Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
461–470 of 1001 posts
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#462Here's my attempt at contributing something meaningful to this discussion, since I'm tired of seeing the same kinds of responses to these threads over and over again. Feel free to disagree, the idea is to try to move the conversation past knee-jerk reactions. This is an FAQ of sorts. Q1: What's wrong with making the government more efficient? My tax dollars are being wasted by Agency X, spending billions of dollars a…
I enjoyed reading that. i don't have anything to add, but i wanted to ensure you at least got a thank you for putting in the time to write all that in the way you did.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#463I am wondering what will happen at the end of all of this? I see a few possibilities here: 1. Either this project will be a tremendous success for the American people, saving millions and uncovering massive fraud and waste in the government thanks to the audits 2. It will ab a complete failure, nothing of value will get discovered, published and time and money will be wasted for everyone involved (giving the DNC a hu…
>saving millions
If you mean that literally they might have success with that but overall American government spending is a pretty boring affair[1], with about 9 out of 10 dollars going to defense, healthcare, interest, social security and the likes. Trying to chase down "woke" fifth columns in the department of education (2% of the budget) is not going to save you a lot of dough. I'd be willing to make a bet they're not going to touch the categories that matter.
[1]https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#464It has been a fairly common story, and part rumor, that intelligence agencies like to recruit young people active in the cyber criminal scene, and that the IT security industry also adapted this approach. They basically becomes part informer and part subject expert, especially since IT security expertise seems to be a difficult subject matter to teach in universities. When I studied IT security in university, about 1…
People get clearances even if they've used hardcore drugs such as cocaine and various more serious crimes than computer crimes. The adjudication guides for clearances explain this in more detail. I have a friend who exploited RCE full-chain exploits on productions servers and used to DDoS. He got a TS/SCI clearance no problem and didn't even finish college. I interviewed too and admitted to that stuff. They cared more about me admitting to cheating in math at college lol.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesn't even line up with what Elon is saying publicly. Mike Flynn searches a public database for grants to organizations with the word "Lutheran" in them and then Elon tweets that they're all illegal and will be canceled. How is that a thoughtful process for identifying wasteful spending? Or Elon saying he's "deleting" the IRS free file group. How is that wasteful? It's providing a service that actually solves…
I don't see how this is remotely incompatible with the parent. What percentage of the 8am-2am grind, do you think said Elon-tweets take? 1%? Less? What the team is doing during the unpublicized 99% is of more interest to me.
The parent is presenting this as a thoughtful exercise by serious, experienced people. It is absolutely not that.
The sudden closure of USAID is probably the best example. You have an organization of thousands of people that operates worldwide. It does a lot of things that save lives - deliver food to starving people, provide HIV medications, etc. If all of a sudden you tell all the grantees that you're shutting everything down, they won't get any more money or support, they need to stop the work they're doing, maybe they can get an exception but nobody is going to be answering the phone when they call to ask how because the staff are all on administrative leave - that has huge consequences. For instance, it meant stopping clinical trials in the middle. So there were women with devices implanted in their bodies with no ability to get support.
There are all sorts of other effects. We provide aid to allies all over the world. All of a sudden, we pull out the rug from under them with no notice. What are the short term and long term consequences of doing that? What would be the consequences to the stability of Jordan of pulling aid - the King has been our ally but it's a tenuous situation. What about Lebanon? Now that Israel has beaten up Hezbollah, we want to use the opportunity to strengthen the Lebanese state. What happens when we suddenly pull funding? There are dozens of different countries that are affected and each of them is a very complicated situation. It's not something that people with no domain expertise are going to figure out in a few days.
The way these guys are acting - it's complete madness.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#466I am wondering what will happen at the end of all of this? I see a few possibilities here: 1. Either this project will be a tremendous success for the American people, saving millions and uncovering massive fraud and waste in the government thanks to the audits 2. It will ab a complete failure, nothing of value will get discovered, published and time and money will be wasted for everyone involved (giving the DNC a hu…
I'm thinking 2/3, but the part you're missing is that the process will destroy US influence around the world. Which may be the real point of all this. It's hard to know where Musk's allegiances really lie. With that said, the US has been in the dominant world position for so long, it's like they forget what it takes to be there. Soft power, by giving people food and support - like USAID does, is part of what helps ke…
I hear this argument a lot and I have two thoughts about it:
1. USA is a rich country, and that's why it can afford helping other countries. But what if you overspend? Now your economy is weak, you lag behind, and sooner or later competitors help more than you (if it's really the best thing to do to rule the world). So maybe optimizing spending is in order? And I think one strategy to optimize an overgrown system is to just burn the old, and start from scratch.
2. Does the "soft power" work if people get used to your help? Maybe it's useful to suspend the help every now and then for all the beneficiaries to realize the magnitude of the help? I wonder how much of the negative effects are read as "evil USA stopped giving us money" and how much "oh so it was USA that was helping us all this time!" Finally, if the help resumes after a new president is elected, won't people forgive USA for suspending it, as that was done by Trump, and now there's this new president that we need to be grateful to?
Just some thoughts of a layman.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#467Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#468> the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration To be honest, this is my first time hearing about The Com. Does anyone have any more reading on this? You'd think they'd use something more secure than Discord (which has 0 encryption) and Telegram which doesn'…
I recommend Marc-André Argentino's research on the Com; he's a conspiracy researcher who got his PhD on QAnon. He leans left, if that's a factor for you.
His general overview: https://www.maargentino.com/the-pillars-of-the-com-network/
That piece doesn't get specific at all about Com activities but be aware that some of the manifestos and other material he discusses is quite disturbing.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#469The reason security clearances are so important, and why people are so upset about randos going through so much sensitive government information, is that things like this can be used by adversaries to lean on these employees in the future. One of these kids might have worse skeletons in their closet. Given how well-known their names are, adversaries of the USA are likely combing through their own intelligence archive…
Well, I mean China already pwned opm.gov and got SF-86 on all fed employees a few years ago. The FBI gives people who have clearances on how adversaries will attempt to get information and what to do. Mainly it's just alerting the employers security office, and former feds get an email to reach out to for questions/concerns post employment. The security clearance process is broken and mostly BS. The head of DCSA and the FBI NYC office got caught doing illegal stuff which the process is suppose to detect.
Also, it's better to go to jail or quit for blackmail then to comply with blackmail, because it caries worst sentences and doesn't have a statue of limitations. Many people with clearances have bad backgrounds and just being honest is all they're looking for in the process. My friend and I even admitted to a bunch of CFAA felonies and was never charged. My friend got a TS/SCI with hacking within the past year of his BI.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#470[flagged]
This is just flame bait without an explanation. The spending data is already public and regularly audited, and if you want to argue kleptocracy you need to start by defining what you mean by that term, who specifically you’re referring to, and what evidence you’re basing that belief on.
A corporate CEO is attempting to move the power of the purse, constitutionally delegated to the congressional branch, away from elected representatives to himself.
He has broken several laws in the process including: putting civil servants on leave in violation of congressionally mandated civil service protections and shuttering a government body codified by Congress in 1998 called the USAID.
This man has not been elected to any office nor appointed by the president to any cabinet positions. His only qualifications are that he is Trump's top donor.
This is a kleptocratic power grab spelled out.